Nagy Gyula: A múzeum szolgálatában (A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 10. Békéscsaba, 1986)

I was born in Orosháza, a small town of the Hungarian Plain 16. Nov. 1911. My parents were poor; my father died in World War I. In 1932 I finished a teachers' training school with the financial help of my masters. I couldn't get a job for four years because of the economic world crisis. At last, in 1936,1 got a teacher's status in my native-town. I established a small „museum" in my school. After World War II., I organised the Town Museum of Orosháza in 1945. In 1950 the museums got into state direction. From this time on I finished teaching and became the director of the museum. I made an effort to become a good ethnographer. At first I edited several volumes of studies. Then I wrote my most important works on the agriculture and peasant life of the Vásárhelyi-puszta. This volume was preceeded by a three decades systematic collecting work in situ. From the very beginning I spared no effort to collect objects. In the same time I learnt all the works that connected to cataloguing. So, there are about 15 000 objects in the well-ordered storages of the Museum in Orosháza. I didn't forget obout the educational tasks. There is a very informative permanent exhibition on the history of the town in the five ground-level rooms. Its title is : The life of eight generations in Orosháza. We also build up 5—6 seasonal exhibitions yearly in the four rooms on the first floor. In the first chapter of this book I told how I had collected my ethnographic knowledge and with whom I shared these informations. At the beginning of my works I learnt the most important tasks from the common works and discussions together with the most eminent schollars : Béla Gunda, Iván Balassa, László К. Kovács, István Kiss and on a few-weeks seminar organized by the Ethnographic Museum in Budapest. During this time I got acquainted with the Vásárhelyi-puszta that lies near Orosháza. It proved to be an excellent area for field works, and as such I worked there for several decades. There I got acquainted and made friendships with a lot of peasantpeople. Quite a number of them became my real collègues. There I formed my field-work system. At the time when I had collected enough knowledge and experiences I strove to share them with others. So, many of the friends and co-workers of the Museum became well-known expert of these studies. Chapter II. represents my pursuit on the choice of subjects. First I couldn't decide on what field of ethnography I would work. Then in Szarvas I saw a still working horse-driven mill, that was quite special in its form. Then I decided to study the Hungarian mills of this type. I gave account of a detailed study of three such mills. — There is a custom in our town that people bake a special round formed brioche for weddings and feasts. It is known all around the country but our close sorrounding. Our ancestors brought this with themselves from the Trans-Danubian in 1744 when they arrived to this area. So, I worked on this theme, too. — In the meantime I decided to to sacrifice my whole life to the study of agriculture and animal-breeding. To study these more generally I examined them also in Doboz and Vésztő, two villages that lay in the same county (Békés) but far away Orosháza. 192